Regulation Review - IPART - NSW Government

4 Estimating the impacts of recommended reforms
4 Estimating the impacts of recommended reforms
The ToR for this review require us to consider and estimate the impacts of our
recommended reforms on business (especially small business), government and
the broader community. This chapter explains how we propose to do this. It
discusses how we will ensure our recommendations produce net benefits to
NSW. It also outlines how we plan to estimate the reduction in regulatory
burden to business and the community and the impact of our recommended
reforms on government.
In line with best practice regulatory principles, our analysis of potential impacts
will be proportionate to the expected impacts of reform and informed by
stakeholder consultation. 80
4.1 Ensuring our recommendations produce net benefits to NSW
The ToR for this review requires us to provide recommendations that produce
net benefits to NSW. This means that we will have to ensure that the value of
regulatory reductions as a result of our recommendations are greater than any
costs they impose on society. A reform that would merely shift costs from one
group within the community to another (eg, from business to government)
would not produce a net benefit to NSW. Similarly, a reform that would reduce
costs to business, but impose costs on the community that are larger than these
reduced business costs (eg, through adverse impacts on the environment,
amenity, public health and safety, etc) would not produce a net benefit to NSW.
In developing our recommendations, we will therefore consider all potential
costs and benefits, not just reduced regulatory costs to regulated businesses or
individuals.
We are also unlikely to examine or critique the underling policy objectives of
existing regulations. We will generally take these objectives as given. Rather, the
aim is to determine ways in which the objectives of regulation can be achieved at
least cost to society.
80 IPART, Investigation into the burden of regulation in NSW and improving regulatory efficiency,
October 2006, p 58; and NSW Better Regulation Office (BRO), Guidelines for estimating savings
under the red tape reduction target, February 2012, p 10.
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